Abstract
Public child welfare agencies in the United States have struggled with high turnover rates, especially among caseworkers. Research has explored turnover in terms of negative organizational outcomes, and efforts have been developed to reduce overall turnover rates. However, there has been little change in turnover rates in the last 30 years. The public child welfare system is inclined to higher turnover due to the unique nature of the work. Efforts to reduce the overall turnover rate fail to recognize the heterogeneity and healthy aspects of turnover unique to public child welfare organizations, which present challenges for both practice and research. By critically questioning how turnover is socially constructed, measured, and addressed, and integrating seminal management principles, a more meaningful metric can be developed. These challenges are explored, and recommendations are proposed for administration and research that include reconstructing and applying a new perspective on turnover to inform and evaluate initiatives that can reduce the impact of dysfunctional turnover within public child welfare organizations.
Highlights
Public child welfare agencies in the United States have struggled with high turnover rates, especially among caseworkers
The magnitude of turnover has fueled a sense of urgency on the part of researchers to understand variables that contribute to turnover, including individual and organizational variables (Strolin-Goltzman et al, 2009; Williams & Glisson, 2013), as well as the health of the economy (Strolin-Goltzman, 2008; Texas Department of Family and Protective Services [TDFPS], 2012)
Within agencies that had low organizational proficiency, decreases in turnover had no significant impact on child welfare outcomes. These findings provide some evidence that challenges the linear relationship between turnover and both client and organizational outcomes in public child welfare agencies
Summary
In Texas, the turnover rate for public child welfare is approximately 26% (Texas Department of Family and Protective Services [TDFPS], 2015) This rate increased from 20% in 1980 (Martinez, 2014) to 25.5-33% in 2015 (Ball & Dexheimer, 2015). The Texas State Auditor’s Office developed a State of Texas Employee Exit Survey to collect data from workers terminating employment in order to better respond to retention needs (Keel, 2014) Despite such initiatives, turnover rates have not significantly declined. The. second measure includes a metric used by the State Auditor’s Office, in which turnover rate is calculated by dividing the number of workers who leave during that fiscal year by the average number of workers for that fiscal year (Keel, 2014). That agency might be described as “hobbling,” “plagued,” and “sucking passion out of employees.”
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